Ibiza 2016: 8/7/16 – 13/7/16

BeachCava

BeachCava

Member
Ibiza 2016: 8/7/16 – 13/7/16

Disclaimer – this is a long read as I'm writing as I remember things, I hope you enjoy it nonetheless!

8/7/16 – Flight out and arrival

So that time had come around again, 13 months to the day since my first trip, I was going back to my favourite place as an experienced member of the club(s)! In typical pre-holiday build up, work had been slow and stressful leading up to today, so by the time I closed the laptop at about 4pm I was completely ready to zone out and go with whatever happened.

Excited didn’t really cut it, this year we were going with nearly double the amount of people, two who hadn’t been before and experiencing probably the best line-ups I could have wished for over the entire summer.

Unfortunately before all that, 4 of us had to deal with Friday afternoon London public transport to reach the airport… so after sinking a few beers at my flat, it was train -> tube -> another tube -> Gatwick express -> shuttle bus to Gatwick South terminal taking about 2 hours. We met up with the other three, rushed a couple more beers before heading through security to the gate (leaving my wallet with ~500Euro on the seat at the pub only to have a stranger run out to give it back to me!) It’s not a holiday without some airport drama I suppose…

The flight was fairly uneventful; the best part was listening to the Gridlock 25min extended mix as we came into land, if anyone has heard it, the ‘drop’/pitch change comes at around 20 mins and it came in just as we landed, pretty magical.

Immediately heading for the taxis, we were dropped off just outside Ushuaia entrance and it all came flooding back from last year: the sights, sounds, the heat and (in an emotional moment of the holiday) the ‘Space’ sign, which I knew (probably) wouldn’t be there the next time I emerged from a taxi first night on the Isle.

It was about 3am at this point, so although the temptation to visit the thumping environment of Space was tempting, we opted for a few quick beers at the bars on the strip instead before bed*

*By the way, don’t get suckered in by shot-girls at the bars. I know they’re working for tips, and it isn’t easy blah blah blah, but when they start getting aggressive and directly insult your group when you won’t buy a drink from them, don’t then cave and buy one anyway as a mate of mine did. I walked out of that place and into bed actually pissed off which wasn’t ideal for the first night!
 
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9/7/16 – Pools, Pete Tong, Ushuaia & Space

First day! I was actually one of the last out of the apartment today as the A/C was particularly nice in my room and very comfortably kept me snoozing through until about 2pm. The others had been down to the beach and so came back gagging for a drink and some food before picking up tickets for Ushuaia. It was ANTS today and my first experience of Ushuaia (and indeed daytime clubbing in Ibiza) so after a quick trip to Moorea along the strip for some cheap grub and a beer, we went to hunt down some Ushuaia tickets and ‘supplies’ for the evening ahead. Acquiring both with relative ease, it was back to the cooling A/C filled apartment room (none of us were used to the heat yet!) for some cheap pre-drinking before getting to Ushuaia for around 6pm.

Lauren Lane was on when we arrived, and having first being introduced to her track ‘Diary of a Madwoman’, I was looking forward to see what she was like in her set, and very good was the answer. Lots of chilled, balearic house that fit perfectly with the late evening sun and not too bad to look at either! ;)

We headed for the shallow pool and spent the next few hours listening to Lauren give way to Maya Jane Coles, turning the tunes a little deeper as the sun crept down below the Ushuaia stage building up to Pete Tong’s set at 10pm.

I wasn’t expecting it at first when the stage lit up, I don’t think many in our area were, as the lights thudded on and sparks erupted from the opposite end to where we were standing. A quick rush out of the pool to the bar and we had a great view of the stage. Tong’s set was great as expected and hearing him introduce himself and say the words “we’re liiive on Radio 1 from Ushuaia”, gave me tingles as I’ve heard that so many times but never experienced it for myself.

Slight hiccup here, as we were standing around watching PT, my mate decided to get his little bag of goods out to pick himself up… exactly the same time as two burly bouncers walked past him, he couldn’t have picked a worse time. Dropping the baggie quickly and trying to work through the crowd, he was promptly dragged back and presented with his… now soggy… bag and escorted off the premises. Luckily it was the tail end of the night and he wasn’t too annoyed!

Loving life until about 11:30pm, we decided it was time to go back, refresh, meet our unlucky friend back at the flat and pick up the space tickets for Elrow that night. Getting to Space for around 1-2am, we headed for the Terrace where Eats Everything was doing his usual thing all night long. I’d seen him in Bristol before, but it’s always pleasure being witness to his sets. He manages to smash it every time with just a great mix of funky house and really good party atmosphere.

Criticisms here, the Discoteca for Elrow was too busy… way, way too many people in there to the point where it was almost dangerous. Pushing and shoving was rife and only made worse by the performers making their way through the crowd on stilts. I only lasted about 20 minutes before needing to get out.

At about 4am I managed to find a small table by the toilets and sat with a couple of mates just listening to the tunes in the background. After being in the sun all day at Ushuaia it was nice to just chill and enjoy the vibes. Slowly the rest of the group trickled by and found us. One of our group was noticeably f*cked… about 3 pills in he couldn’t get his words out or really move his mouth at all – so at this point we decided it was best to call it a night.
 
10/7/16 – A tale of luck and Solomun+1 @ Pacha

There was some controversy surrounding tonight. A couple of the veteran members of our group on their third or fourth trip really didn’t like Pacha at all. Saying it was too posy, too much about the VIP and the ‘look’ of clubbing more than the actual vibe of the night out - I tended to agree… but for the benefit of the new guys (one a huge Solomun fan like myself) it was worth it for the +1 night. We came to an agreement that it was for the best we go, then if it was too busy at least the new guys could see some of it.

After taking some time to recover from ‘double-dipping’ yesterday, we had a lazy afternoon at the beach before wolfing down large mixed paella at one of the restaurants on the strip. Picking up Pacha tickets from the stand outside of the old Dunes bar, we played some drinking games back at the nice cool apartment (did I mention I loved the A/C in this place :p) before heading to Pacha for about 12/1am.

We walked in to the signature sound of Solomun - I could bang on about why I love his sets for days, but every single time I’ve seen him live, listened to a show or watched him online he never fails to deliver a set that both appeals to your need for big, deep house tunes with big builds and slow drops, and then come in with something funky completely out of leftfield that just gets the crowd jumping again.

Dixon was a pleasure to listen to aswell, working really well off Solomun’s track choices with his own style – and to top it off, Maceo Plex was up there dancing alongside the both of them! Arguably three of my favourite DJ’s all in one place, about 3 feet away. I was only in there for a few hours but it was contender of best night of the trip for me. Amazing.

Funniest moment of the night and a throwback to Saturday evening when my mate got thrown out of Ushuaia, I was dancing along enjoying myself to some great track Dixon had just dropped and reached in for my bag. As I was struggling with opening it, I felt a hand on my shoulder. Thinking it was just my mate asking for a dab, I shrugged it off and said “in a sec”, only for it to be returned by a full force tug to spin me around – f*cking bouncers right in my face! Bag in hand, finger covered in ‘brown sugar’, well… “hand in the cookie jar”, “red-handed”… pick your idiom! Basically I was f***ed and knew I couldn’t blag this one. They just stared amused from me to the bag, looking for a reply and all I could manage was a shrug! :D A few seconds passed, then gave me back then stuff, burst out laughing, slapped me on the shoulder and let me go – so surreal! It was at this point a random English guy next to me leant in and said “You’re one lucky f***er”. Yes, yes I was.

About 5am a couple of us decided to make a move, just for a desire to get some fresh air and I quite fancied a beer without paying extortionate prices at the bar. So we headed out. Shout out to the American guy (forgot his name) outside Pacha by the way, had a long chat with him about how he grew up in Madrid, educated in California and now lives in Spain and gave us some of his Euro’s for a couple of beers. Super cool guy, if you’re on here man, thanks! Good luck with your van! ;)
 
11/7/16 – The Roll-over, getting yelled at and ultimately Cocoon @ Amnesia

Things get patchy here… at some point between 8 and 9am Monday when we were chilling in the sea back down by the beach, one of my friends suggested that he was going to ‘roll through’ the day and night as there was no way he could sleep. This idea slowly filtered down to the rest of us until all but one was in agreement that we should do it.

All I really remember from the day was walking to get breakfast at about 10am, and on the way out of the restaurant we met a cute English rep who was working at a bar along the strip. She coerced us into joining her back at the bar and gave us a free round of drinks for our trouble. It was at this point we decided we needed a bit of powdery help to get us through the afternoon and she sourced some fantastic stuff for us… but really we should have known there was an ulterior motive here.

Soon we were joined by an aggressive member of staff who started really pushing some boat party. The rep then chimed in saying that she’d do us a good discount on tickets and spun a bit of a sob story about how she barely makes rent selling these and is sick of people coming in and not buying them. I made myself scarce to try out the product and when I got back, the surly staff member was shouting at our group – half of which were already out the door - about how we were “pieces of shit, taking everything but not buying” (even though we’d just shelled out £80 for gear) and that if we didn’t “get the f*** out in 5 minutes” he’d charge us for the free beers.

It’s fine if you want to sell me something, and I’m more than willing to listen to you pitch, but if I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go… and getting angry definitely won’t change that. I shouldn’t be shamed into buying something because you’ve offered to give me something to free to entice me in.

Anyway, we spent the next 6 or so hours (I think) hoovering up the rest of the bag in another bar along the street, conversation ranged from drink, drugs and girls to politics, history and just about every other thing to set the world to rights. It seemed to go by in an absolute flash and before I knew it, we were on our way to pick up tickets for Amnesia that night.

Really… really patchy here, I think I was just being driven along by 90% narcotics and 10% adrenaline because I have nothing but snapshots of the taxi to Amnesia, staring at Ida Engberg and then promptly leaving about 3 or 4 hours later… When I got back to the flat I just crashed in the nearest chair and woke up in the same position 6 hours later.
 
12/7/16 – Ushuaia and Space (again)


Last day!

I’d made it here alive but barely. It wasn’t a good move doing that all-nighter bookended by two major club nights, not really because I couldn’t handle it but because my memory has become fuzzy for a good 20 hour period that was otherwise I imagine – very good. I love techno second only to house so I was in all likelihood having a blast listening to Beyer, Engberg and Scuba doing their thing last night. Alas, I can’t say for sure!

Anyway, Carl Cox tonight – we’d had it booked through Spotlight for about 5 months so you could say this was a pretty long time coming!

Once everyone had slowly crawled out from their beds, we perked ourselves up with some mojitos down by the beach and a bit of a debrief from the day before, trying to fill the gaps in our memories. No rush today really, although we wanted to make the most of the evening so we bought Ushuaia tickets for Chocolate Puma and *shudder* Hardwell*

*Now let me just say, I have no liking for the stuff Hardwell ‘plays’ whatsoever. I don’t consider him a good DJ, I think he’s a bit of a charlatan who has made his wealth through playing top 40 dance ‘hits’, waiting for a drop and then playing the next song. (He played “took a pill in Ibiza” for god’s sake!) He doesn’t mix, doesn’t let the crowd get into a flow and has really just scrambled to the top of the pile of a long line of average Saturday night club DJ’s through a career of doing this. He’s fun for some people; I know plenty loved it in Ushuaia and of course there’s a market for it. But I consider it shit, lol /rantover.

After ditching Hardwell after about 40 minutes, we went back to the flat to drink whatever remained in the fridge before Space. Luckily no kick out time in the morning so packing could wait (I hate packing the night before leaving) so we proceeded to drink the place dry and head over to Space at about 2am for Carl.

What else can I say, amazing. Just top notch stuff from a DJ who deserves everything he’s made for himself. Techno and House flowed flawlessly one after the other, getting very deep towards 6am when he reached the pinnacle of his set. All the trademark phrases were there “Oh Yes, Oh Yes”, “Fantastic, Fantastic”. It was exactly as I pictured – even down to his flair and movements on the decks. Great stuff and well worth the long, long wait this year. It’s such a shame he’s packing it in, I don’t think there’s many who can follow Carl, especially in his natural environment in Space – It was a bit of an emotional moment for me to be honest.

Naturally we stayed until the end, he thanked the crowd and we filtered out into the Wednesday morning sun. That was it – it’s taken me about 2-3 hours to write this up, and at the time it seemed like that was the length of the whole holiday! Ibiza is always a fleeting visit (although probably for the best!) We trudged back to our rooms and I passed out for the last time on the bed.

To sum it up though – amazing, as I knew it would be. I’ll be back next year of course; I imagine with the same crowd as this year and remain intrigued as to where I’ll go instead of Space!

Thanks again Ibiza, you ruined me for about a week after I got home, but you were an absolute delight – see you next year.

And also thanks to whoever read all this, I hope it was entertaining for you!

Top tip:

So I don't know if anyone else has suffered this, but I guess in my old(er) age I've developed much more sensitive hearing than I thought. I got back last Wednesday night and the ringing in my ears has only just started to fade. It's actually been really horrible, especially at night, and I will be taking extra precautions next time I go. Don't take your ears for granted kids!
 
BeachCava said:
...At about 4am I managed to find a small table by the toilets and sat with a couple of mates just listening to the tunes in the background ...
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that table where opposite the toilets are left and the space-shop right ?
 
That was a great read, sounds like you had a real blast. I think you got very lucky in Pacha - I've seen several punters thrown out from there over the years for "partaking".
 
if u dont spot bouncers in club when doing ur stuff :eek:, i hope u haven't been pickpocketed as for me u are 100% easy sparkling targets :lol:
Don't go to Dc10, u will be in serious trouble :D
 
FallenangelGparsons said:
if u dont spot bouncers in club when doing ur stuff :eek:, i hope u haven't been pickpocketed as for me u are 100% easy sparkling targets :lol:
Don't go to Dc10, u will be in serious trouble :D
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That's the thing, they crept up out of nowhere it seemed - happened to my mate in Ushuaia too on the first day! I didn't get pickpocketed thankfully but I'm pretty vigilant with my stuff after the horror stories I read on here!
 
BeachCava said:
Correct, sir
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that is one of the very best places to chillax in space.
and sooner or later you see everybody walking by - in broad light .

that table is great,too. these can cost a few 1000s.
if only some fool hadn´t painted it in this colour ...
 
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